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Are we there yet? Is the X4500HD chipset suitable for a MythTV frontend? Or does NVidia still have the only hardware decoder workingright now? I want to order parts this week and actually get them working, not wait'n'hope for a future driver release.

I recently bought a nvidia 9500GT (fanless) for my HTPC. First impressions:

- 2D performance is slow but adequate. My previous 7600GS (also fanless) offered *much* better 2D performance.
- Haven't tested 3D performance, but it should be adequate.
- XBMC w/ VDPAU allows perfect 1080p playback on a single-core Athlon64 3200+. Make sure you have enough RAM available (2GB is fine).
- Compiz and XBMC do not play well together.
- Multi-monitor setups are a pain on nvidia. Twinview sucks with different-size monitors and anything else fails to sync correctly.
- XRandR does not work on my setup.
- The drivers do not autodetect newly connected monitors (why, Nvidia?). This is a major pain if you turn on your PC before you turn on your TV.
- Audio passthrough works, but is limited to your sound card's capabilities. This typically means that you won't be able to get 5.1 sound on games and typical desktop usage. DTS/AC3 encoded signals work fine, however.

All in all, I'm underwhelmed. Things work, but support is only borderline adequate. It would actually be fine if I only had a single monitor connected, but add a second one and it will introduce a world of pain.

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Are we there yet? Is the X4500HD chipset suitable for a MythTV frontend? Or does NVidia still have the only hardware decoder workingright now? I want to order parts this week and actually get them working, not wait'n'hope for a future driver release.

There's only hardware acceleration for MPEG2 at the moment, and I'm not sure if that's available in a release or only from git.

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My advice is if you need a HTPC, go NVidia. NVidia's VDPAU API for video acceleration is in boxee, mythtv and xmbc. With VDPAU, even the puny Intel Atom processor can handle 1080p.

I just wanna give a big Thank You out to you and Kano for your advice. I went with a Zotac IONITX (Atom and 9400M) and have been quite pleased by the performance. Sure, with the closed drivers, some day I'm going to update my kernel, go to nvidia's website to get drivers compatible with that kernel, and will find that my hardware is unsupported. As long as that day is enough years away, though, I guess I can't complain much. Hopefully Intel will have their driver finished by then, so that I can replace my disposable motherboard with a permanent one with maintainable drivers.

Good luck and best wishes to the team working on X4500HD. In a few(?) months, I'm buying a second Myth frontend for another room, and I'll be checkin' the Intel driver's progress again then.